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Paul Bond

From a Fellow Volunteer:

I served in the Peace Corps in Ecuador from 1964-1966. I worked as a civil engineer on several infrastructure projects. In early 1966 I asked for assistance from the Quito head office because I needed help to create a topographic survey of a region near Santo Domingo de los Colorados. I had inherited responsibility for completing a bridge over one of the local rivers, but discovered one morning after a three day rain that the river overtopped the bridge piers.

Gerald Flynn and Paul Bond were seconded to me. They had completed their assignments and were waiting discharge from the Corps. They took a bus to Santo Domingo. We met and went right to work. The project took about a week. Each of us spent ten hours a day in the tropical sun, taking measurements. Then we returned to Santo Domingo, and over the next two days I completed the map. The result was good.

During our time together we worked hard, laughed hard, drank a lot of beers, and talked about the future. Gerry was returning to Tennessee, Paul to Seattle. Since I planned on going to Seattle to work for Boeing at the conclusion of my term of service, later in 1966, Paul and I agreed to look each other up.

They were quite excited to finish their Peace Corps term, because they planned to visit Macchu Picchu before returning to the US. We said goodbye, and I thought that was that.

Several days later, in Quito, I overheard a Short Wave Radio transmission between the Peace Corps Office and the US Embassy in Lima, Peru. The discussion topic was dental X-ray records for Gerry and Paul. Their flight from Lima to Cuzco crashed into a mountain in bad weather, with complete loss of life.

I was deeply saddened to hear of the loss of those two good guys. I attempted to find Paul’s family in Seattle when I moved there, without success.

4 Responses to Paul Bond

Paul Bond was my cousin; he was named for his uncle, Paul Lucas, who was my dad.
We lived in different cities growing up, so never got to know each other very well . He was a year or so younger.
I remember how pleased I was to hear that he had joined the Peace Corps, something I had wanted to do myself but had lacked the courage.
Thank you for this remembrance of a fine young man.

Paul Bond is my brother & it was such a loss to our family to find out Paul had been killed in an airplane crash. He was the oldest of 5. Such a wonderful brother that was soo loved.. we lost him April 27th., 1966 & buried him on Mother’s Day, May 10th., 1966.

Paul Bond, Gerry Flynn and I were in the same Peace Corps group that went to Ecuador. The information that I have on them was that Paul was from Jonesboro, Arkansas. And Gerry was from Seattle, Wa. . Our whole group was saddened to hear of that crash that took those two fine young men.
An interesting aside here is that I, and others in our same PC group, were on that fight from Lima to Cuzco some time earlier that year where we experienced an extremely hard landing in Cuzco.

paul Bond was my cousin..He worked for the Peace corps in Ecuador.He grew up in Jonesboro Arkansas. Most of his family is still there.I didn’t know about his connection to Seattle… Maybe he had taken a job there. none of his family ever lived in Seattle.